Local News

State housing finance officials tour local ag businesses

Decision on tax credits could decide fate of proposed housing development

By Jenni Grubbs

Times Staff Writer

Posted:
02/07/2014 03:58:11 PM MST

Tasha Weaver, tax credit allocation manager for the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, peers through the window at the cows being milked Jan. 30 at Quail Ridge Dairy southeast of Fort Morgan. Weaver was one of the state officials from CHFA who came to Fort Morgan and Morgan County to learn more about the need for housing for agricultural workers in this area. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

FORT MORGAN — — Fort Morgan city leaders are doing all they can to ensure that a proposed housing development gets built in Fort Morgan later this year.

One of those things was arranging a tour in Fort Morgan and Morgan County for state officials from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority and various other state agencies.

The CHFA officials toured part of the city and a couple of agricultural businesses that employ workers who might be eligible to live in such a complex.

The goal of the tour for both the city and the Community Resources & Housing Development Corp. was to show the CHFA officials the extent of the need for housing in this area for agricultural workers and their families.

Quail Ridge Dairy owner Mary Kraft, left, explains how her dairy southeast of Fort Morgan operates to the state and local officials who toured it Jan. 30. The state officials were trying to learn more about the agricultural employment and housing opportunities in Fort Morgan and Morgan County to aid them in making a decision about granting tax credits for a proposed housing development in Fort Morgan. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

The 50-unit housing development that the nonprofit CRHDC wants to build in Fort Morgan would help fill that need, according to Carly Johansson, CRHDC director of real estate development.

Money

The proposed development is being funded by a $1 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and a $2 million USDA loan, as well as some other funding sources. It also was approved to offer rental assistance to tenants through USDA Rural Solutions.

But another piece of the puzzle that CRHDC is depending upon in order to get the complex built is state tax credits from CHFA.

The project was denied this in a previous funding round, but another one starts in March, and CRHDC and the city are hoping this time will be the charm because the officials making the decision will be better informed about the need the project would fill.

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"The main goal of the tour was to get CHFA really familiar with the community and make sure they're understanding the needs of the community," Johansson said. "Now they see how little housing and how much employment there is in Fort Morgan."

She said her group would submit an application to CHFA March 3. In the meantime, CRHDC was gathering letters of support from various area agencies and businesses, including the city of Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Cargill Meat Solutions, the Colorado Division of Housing and Morgan County Department of Human Services.

Carly Johansson from the Community Resource & Housing Development Corp., center in the white coat, shows Representatives from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority the land where a proposed 50-unit housing development would be built in Fort Morgan just east of the Morgan County Department of Human Services building. The people from CHFA and CRHDC, along with city and county officials, on Jan. 30 toured some local agricultural businesses that may employ the workers who would live in the development with their families. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

"The more letters we get, the better," she said.

Johansson said they likely would find out in May if the project would get the state tax credits this time.

"There are lots of applications, so it's a slow turnaround," she said. "I think we have very good chances."

She said that the USDA funding and the state rental assistance should make CRHDC's application "a lot more competitive."

Proposed project

The proposed housing development project would hold 50 units specifically for workers and their families with at least 65 percent of household income coming from something related to agriculture, Johansson said.

It would include unfurnished three- and four-bedroom units, each with two bathrooms.

She said the units would be good for multi-generational families, as they would be laid out with the kitchen and dining room in the center and the bedrooms and bathrooms to the sides.

The nonprofit has already purchased the land for the project, and the Fort Morgan City Council annexed it into the city in 2013.

"Right now, we're procuring the engineers for building out Linda Street," Johansson said.

Fort Morgan City Manager Jeff Wells said the city also would work on building out the street, which is part of the agreement between the city and CRHDC.

Johansson said that getting the tax credits from CHFA in May would mean construction on the housing development likely could start by early fall.

"We're still moving forward," Johansson said. "Hopefully, we get awarded the tax credits so we can move on the project all at once and not have to search for other funding."

Taking tours

When they came out to Morgan County on Jan. 30, the CHFA officials first saw the site for the proposed housing development, which is in what currently are corn fields just east of the Morgan County DHS building on East Beaver Avenue.

"You can see how well connected this property is to the city of Fort Morgan," Johansson said, pointing to the nearby police station to the north and Cargill off to the east.

Also along for the ride were representatives from the city, the county, Morgan County Economic Development Corp. and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

The CHFA officials asked questions about the proximity to grocery stores and access to public or organized private transportation services.

They also toured Quail Ridge Dairy southeast of the city, where dairy owner Mary Kraft showed them the parts of the dairy and told them about how many people it employed, what their wages and hours were like, and the problems her employees encountered with finding housing.

She said that Quail Ridge employs 75 full-time workers, with the majority of them of Hispanic descent. The dairy also offers the employees lifeskills classes and help with learning English.

"We're trying to grow them as people," Kraft said. "We're constantly looking at how we find guys and how we develop them."

She said she believed half of her workers would be eligible to live in the type of family-oriented housing development CRHDC was looking to build.

"From the dairy side, we can almost fill up the housing you have just from my place," Kraft said. "There really is a need for that. There is not the quantity and quality of housing needed here."

And having the right type of housing available was important to her business.

"We had had problems hiring the people we want to hire because they couldn't find housing," Kraft said.

Retention of workers also is a problem for this reason, she said.

"I think if they had a more stable housing environment, they would stay longer," she said.

Kraft also shared some of the stories she had heard of overcrowding in what housing was available and even "places where you pay for a sleeping mat for eight hours," instead of having a real home.

"How do you find a girl, develop a family, if you're living in such a subsistence situation?" she questioned, adding that many of the available rental units and trailers also were not in good condition or were very expensive. "It's not living conditions our guys should be in. We're really excited about having a place for our guys to stay. Most of them are in dicey living conditions."

She said she would love to be able to provide the housing herself through the dairy, but the business's cashflow would not accommodate that solution.

"All the money goes back into the dairy," she said.

Next, the group went to Cargill and toured that facility, learning about the employee adult education program there, as well as similar stories about problems finding housing.

At Cargill, the CHFA officials "had the opportunity to listen to a few of the students talk about difficulties they've had finding housing," Wells said, adding that teachers there "shared stories of others who can't find a place to live in Fort Morgan."

He said that while the city's economy is growing, an expansion in housing has not followed yet.

"We don't have the housing for everyone who wants to come here and live and work," Wells said.

However, he acknowledged that there a lot of communities in Colorado facing the same problem.

"There really isn't a model out there for (addressing) it yet," Wells said.

He called the CHFA's officials' visit to Fort Morgan "very successful, from the perspective that we sought to educate some of the state agencies on the housing situation."

"I thought that the city did a phenomenal job of coordinating the whole thing," Johansson said. "Mary Kraft did a wonderful job, and the same with Cargill."

She said that the CHFA officials heard what Cargill's education program does not only to teach the workers English, but how to be a good citizen.

"That is good for our property manager: how to be a good renter," Johansson said. "That will be thoroughly useful."

Both employers also offered the CHFA officials a sense of the need for quality, affordable family housing in the area for the agricultural workers, Johansson said.